Conservatives take aim at state ERA in new opposition campaign

While Democrats attempt to mobilize support for the controversial Equal Rights Amendment by appealing to the need to protect abortion rights, conservative critics of the ballot proposal have focused instead on the amendment’s potential impact on trans rights and immigrants’ rights. Led by Republican former Rep. Lee Zeldin, conservatives say their goal is to educate New York’s voters, and parents, about what is at risk in their households and communities, continuing to frame the ballot proposal as one of fairness in girls’ sports and elections. It’s a message that they hope will win over independents and conservative Democrats, not just fellow Republicans.

Zeldin, fresh from a Trump rally in Nassau County, said Thursday in Albany that the campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment went beyond politics and suggested that Democrats in the state Legislature were disingenuous about their intent when they brought the proposal to voters. He said that while Democrats have portrayed the amendment as simply enshrining abortion rights into law, it actually goes much further.

​​The Equal Rights Amendment would prohibit discrimination based on someone’s ethnicity, nation of origin, age, disability and sex with provisions covering sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes. However, a legal battle over the ballot language that went in Republicans’ favor means voters this fall will consider a bill that doesn’t explicitly use the words abortion or LGBT, much to the chagrin of lawmakers and supporters of the amendment. 

“If they wanted this to be about abortion, they should have passed a bill that calls it the Equal Rights Amendment, and they should have used the word ‘abortion,’” Zeldin said. “As far as defeating Prop One, whether you are in a battleground house district or not, I'm encouraging all New Yorkers to vote no, and we're not going to go through one by one, but there are Democrats standing behind me as well. These aren't just Republicans who are here, and these issues that we're here to talk about aren't Republican and Democrat issues.”

Zeldin acknowledged increased activity on the topic in swing districts but insisted that he isn’t just talking about the amendment in order to juice conservative voter turnout. Instead, he said that his concern about the ballot proposal comes from his experience during previous election cycles, when he would “flip the ballot over like, you know what, I should have been telling voters in my congressional district on this particular proposal to vote a different way.”

While Zeldin has focused largely on the amendment’s potential effect on trans rights, one of his fellow Republicans is much more concerned about how it could affect undocumented immigrants.

Putnam County Executive Kevin Byrne, a former Assembly member, accused Democrats in the state Legislature of intending to use the ERA in order to expand voting rights to New Yorkers who are not U.S. citizens. (The amendment would not do this; although it would ban discrimination based on national origin, it would have no effect on immigrants’ voting rights.) It’s a particularly sensitive issue after the 2023 partial relocation of asylum seekers upstate while New York City began to buckle under the weight of the migrant crisis, with Republican lawmakers and candidates seeing it as an opportunity to capitalize on public safety concerns. 

“We know their playbook,” Byrne said. “This is part of their intention and to think otherwise, these incredibly naive radical progressives in New York City, several of whom I know because I worked with them when I was in the state Assembly, they would absolutely grant non-citizens, non-citizens across the state, the right to vote if given the opportunity. Those who will come to this country and who want to vote must first go through the process of becoming a permanent resident and becoming American citizens if they want to vote.”

The effects of conservatives’ sometimes hyperbolic attacks on the ERA ballot proposal have been mixed. The latest poll from Siena College found both that fewer independent voters now support the amendment and that fewer Republicans now oppose the amendment, compared to last month.

Democrats in New York have tried to inoculate swing district voters against conservative attacks on the ERA. As City & State previously reported, internal polling found that negative messaging against the ERA has had a palpable effect on voters in battleground districts, where the ERA is receiving increased attention coinciding with the highly scrutinized congressional campaigns, but this effect could be partially reversed with positive messaging about the ballot proposal. Accordingly, they’ve developed their own pitch to voters in the suburbs. 

“Lee Zeldin voted to ban abortion, ban travel for pregnant women, and defund Planned Parenthood while in office. It makes sense that he’s lying about Prop 1, which will protect abortion access and prevent government discrimination,” Sasha Ahuja, campaign director for New Yorkers for Equal Rights, said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: New Yorkers, not extreme politicians like Lee Zeldin – should be in charge of their fundamental rights and freedoms – including the right to abortion. This November, every New Yorker should flip their ballot and vote yes on Prop 1.”